Best Festival (Live Music) Lollapooza 96 (Syracuse NY)': Ramones Farewell(actual) tour, Rancid (when they were still in their 20’s), Wu Tang Clan (with the Ol’ Dirty Bastard), Soundgarden, and Metallica (which i didn’t stay for, too much of a red-neck presence).Best Festival (Electronic Music), starscape 2002 (Baltimore MD) This was the last year when they still had 7 stages. Since this was right around the time of the “Crack House Law” crackdowns on parties there was a very light drug presence. Lonnie does an amazing job on putting together his parties. It was amazing.

The best live show I’ve ever been to was mayhem festival. All day, all metal. I mean, with bands like Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom, and Machine Head on the same bill, how could you go wrong? On top of that, I saw Job for a Cowboy’s Nick Schizendielos, one of the best metal bassists today. To wrap up the show, Rob Zombie tore it up along with John 5 and Ginger Fish. Loved it.

Mainly based upon the mosh pit of CDB’ers past and present during Titus Andronicus. I got to yell in people’s faces phrases like “THE ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE” and “YOU WILL ALWAYS, BE A LOSER” and sway with them arm in arm two minutes later. All in all it was probably the most exercise I’d had in years.

One time I saw Black Moth Super Rainbow in a fancy hotel ballroom. I was 16 and wearing a homemade cardboard robot helmet and dancing furiously. There was a man on stage whose job it was to dance around and wave a flag while wearing a fur body suit and a rubber mask that resembled an elderly Asian man. At one point this man was throwing water bottles out to the thirsty crowd. The man foolishly threw one underhand in an attempt to reach the back of the crowd. This particular water bottle hit the strange chandelier that hung over the croud. (For a visual, this chandelier looked like a bunch of upside down waterglasses) The water bottle shattered a few of these “glasses” and shards of glass rained down upon the audience. Though the glass shattered directly above me, I was saved by the large cardboard helmet I decided (perhaps due to some sort of divine providence) to wear. To this day, I cannot forget the visual of angry bald reporter with a bloody head yelling at an extremely apologetic masked man in a fuzzy suit. Their words could not be heard behind the sound of Dandelion Gum era Black Moth (who never stopped playing by the way). But they could be seen flailing about cartoonishly. Black Moth played a pretty great set too.